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Are the Barrels Empty? Are The Children Any Safer? Child Domestic Labor and Servitude in Ghana

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Abstract

This chapter examines the perceptions of Ghana’s child domestic servants about their experiences living and working in households that are not those of their biological parents. On the one hand, it acknowledges the positive potential of children’s work—when it is not exploitive—to socialize them into becoming productive adults, and on the other hand, it illustrates the exploitative and sometimes enslaving processes and conditions characterizing their recruitment or trafficking into, work within, and exit from domestic servitude. Children’s willingness to endure such abuses in the hope of reducing their family’s level of household dependency and enhancing its survival strategies is also discussed. Primarily qualitative, this research places emphasis on the meanings children associate with the interplay of traditional fosterage and their roles as domestic servants.

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Authors
  1. C. Nana Derby
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Marisa O. Ensor

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© 2012 Marisa O. Ensor

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Derby, C.N. (2012). Are the Barrels Empty? Are The Children Any Safer? Child Domestic Labor and Servitude in Ghana. In: Ensor, M.O. (eds) African Childhoods. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137024701_2

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